


Under a Blood Red Sky

by persnickett



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies)
Genre: Holidays, M/M, New Year's Eve, Post-The Scorch Trials, scorchfic, that bloody blanket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 07:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17240318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: Nothing changes (on New Year's Day).-U2<3





	Under a Blood Red Sky

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

All is quiet, and the first of his words always seem awkward and brazen – shoved headfirst out into the dark before their time. But even if he can’t see it yet, Thomas knows the mock complaint is setting a smile across preoccupied lips.

 

He has come to know it by heart, the sound of the uneven step scattering the sand, the tall, familiar silhouette that slips in to block out the stars. The way Newt feels striding up behind him.

 

Even the hot, dusty, unwashed scent of him as he takes his inevitable seat next to him. Nesting right up close to him in the sand even though they have a whole world, an entire scorched blank of landscape to fill.

 

Thomas could set time by it by now, the dully sharp ache that starts somewhere he can’t quite name. The bittersweet agony of being so close, but never touching.

 

Sure enough, the heavy, muffling folds of a blanket settle into his lap, with a soft, unceremonious  _flump_.

 

“’Bout that time, huh?” Thomas lets his fingers move over the rough woolen layers, only now noticing the depth of the chill in the night air around them.

 

Newt doesn’t sit though. He turns and matches Thomas’ gaze, looking out over the water, the light of the moon off its surface painting his face in shadow and silver.

 

“Nearly midnight.”

 

Thomas lets his head hang, and the smile seep slowly onto his features, not really all that surprised anymore by the way it feels out of place. He’s aware he probably hasn’t done it in days.

 

It’s just that Newt usually doesn’t leave it this late, is the thing. To come and find him, to remind him that everyone else has settled in already, and he’ll be no good to Minho, their cause, or anyone, if he can’t even ‘ _bloody well_ _hold his buggin’ head up’_. But then tonight… maybe Newt doesn’t want to miss it either.

 

There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, wanting to observe the dying of this night pass into the next morning. It’s not as if anything changes after all. But Newt keeps his calendar faithfully, and everybody here knows Thomas has been counting the days too. They’ve been still too long. Stalled, stagnant and restless.

 

They spend a quiet minute under the stars, blazing coldly down from galaxies away, unchanging and indifferent.

 

“Think they’re celebrating?” he asks finally, when Newt doesn’t speak. Doing his Patient Listener thing tonight, instead of the Pep Talk thing. Thomas still hasn’t figured out how he knows, but Newt always does, somehow.

 

Thomas looks up at him, allowing himself the moment to just take his friend in, standing under silver-black moonlight with his weight shifted onto one slim hip, lean arms folded in front of his chest.

 

It’s worth it, to see the way Newt can still soften – the gentle downsweep of lashes as his gaze turns subtly inward, the slight upward quirk of his mouth at the corner. “I hope so…”

 

Leave it to Newt. To hear the words  _Last City_ , and think of just that – a last place where there were _people_ , still living lives that are less, even, than memory for him. Mere echoes of a time taken from all of them, first by fate, then by force. A last hope.

 

Thomas can only think of one person.

 

He has never tasted champagne, he’s reasonably sure, but he can imagine the way it would feel in a glass. Cooling the sides of the narrow flute, held slick and delicately between perfectly manicured fingers. Raised to that set of lying lips.

 

He would hope that she choked but it would take away the satisfaction of doing it himself. The certainty. He has watched her die once before after all.

 

Newt turns, chin tucking into his shoulder to look back at him. Reading his thoughts as plainly as he ever does, as if they had been written out in front of their feet in the sand.

 

He sits then, stepping back to fit narrowly in next to him, arranging his long legs in front of himself and settling in. 

 

He’s so close Thomas can almost feel their clothing brush together in places. Almost.

 

“Remember anything?” His mouth is dry, but that’s nothing new.

 

“Just a feeling, really. Excitement. …The start of something new.” It’s imagination, for sure, that he can make out the constellations reflected in his eyes, but Thomas sees them all the same, as plain as anything, as Newt turns his face up to the sky – their eternal patterns warmed and changed, charmed by the aspect of their living mirror. “You?”

 

“Nothing useful. Alcohol, kissing at midnight…”

 

Thomas is looking skyward now too, and the pinpoint lights in front of him play the imposters now – wan, insipid imitations of the way they looked a moment ago under Newt’s spell.

 

There’s a hand, suddenly, finding the bend of his knee under the folded blanket, the thumb making a single, familiar stroke over the arc of his thigh. So it takes a second to work it out, what is happening when he feels the sudden, spine-freezing tickle of Newt’s hair against the shell of his ear.

 

There’s the brief electricity of what he realizes almost too late must be the tip of Newt’s nose, nudging into the rise of his cheekbone, just under his temple. And then—

 

It feels like all his nerves fire at once, and the only stars he can see are behind his eyelids – erupting into blinding, scattershot bursts. Multicoloured lightning slices the darkness, sending out showers of sparks in blazing magnesium white, bright emerald greens and brilliant cobalt blue.   

 

The slamming, dizzying force of the memory returning mixes in, indistinguishable from the sizzling, scalding thrill of this, his current moment, and Thomas feels an icy-white shot of something much stronger than champagne streak intoxicatingly down his spine.

 

It has to be the last second, the last possible fraction of time, when he recovers enough to respond, ducking and tipping downward to butt his forehead gently against the corner of Newt’s own, cutting off his escape before he can withdraw.

 

“… _Fireworks_ ,” he whispers.

 

The single note of Newt’s pleased little chuckle blows a breath into his ear and down the side of his neck so that his skin flushes hot and cold all at once, prickling tightly with gooseflesh.

 

It’s a short, knowing sound, which should maybe be alarming, but then Newt always knows everything anyway, when it comes to him. 

 

“Happy New Year, Tommy,” he says, low and quiet and close.

 

And then he’s gone. Pulling away into the night and getting to his feet. Leaving the warmth of the place his hand had been and the ghost of the only kiss Thomas can remember tingling madly in his wake.

 

Nothing changes. Not at the tick of a clock or the passing of a night. Change comes when it will, unlooked for and unbidden, and the stars wink down at him, their ancient shapes now wise and warm and knowing.

 

He really has been still too long. Thomas’ fingers wander the rough fibres of the wool another moment or so before he lets them come up, for the briefest of brushes, over the lingering heat and tingle at his cheek. He pushes himself up onto his feet, ready to follow after, find a place to turn in for what’s left of the night.

 

A start of something new.

 

The timing isn’t right, of course. It might never be.

 

But he has to admit, he sure likes the sound of it.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and a couple of lines if you can spot them) taken from U2's _New Year's Day_
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cg2u2g4YjQ
> 
> All is quiet on New Year's Day  
> A world in white gets underway  
> I want to be with you  
> Be with you, night and day  
> Nothing changes on New Year's Day  
> On New Year's Day  
> I will be with you again  
> I will be with you again
> 
> Under a blood red sky  
> A crowd has gathered in black and white  
> Arms entwined, the chosen few  
> The newspapers says, says  
> Say it's true, it's true  
> And we can break through  
> Though torn in two  
> We can be one  
> I, I will begin again  
> I, I will begin again
> 
> Ah, maybe the time is right  
> Oh, maybe tonight  
> I will be with you again  
> I will be with you again  
> And so we're told this is the golden age  
> And gold is the reason for the wars we wage  
> Though I want to be with you, be with you  
> Night and day  
> Nothing changes  
> On New Year's Day
> 
>  
> 
> Happy New Year <3


End file.
